It is important to know that throughout history, very few investors have been able to achieve satisfactory results and even fewer have achieved extraordinary returns over a long period of time.

This fact has helped to catapult those people into the ranks of the best investors in history.
Although the strategies employed are different in each case, they all have something in common: perseverance, discipline, talent and, why not say it, perhaps some luck.

If there is anything to learn in this world, it is always better to learn from those who have done it, not from those who just preach. So if I want to make the best long-term investments, I want to know who the best are.

Benjamin Graham

Image of Benjamin GrahamBenjamin Graham (1894-1976) is considered the father of investment value.
Warren Buffett himself acknowledged that it was Graham who provided him with a solid intellectual structure for investment, giving him the financial foundation that has helped him become what he is today.
Broadly speaking, Graham spent part of his time carefully analysing the financial status of the companies he found attractive, identifying the target price based on their real value.
One of his books, The Smart Investor, is considered the bible of value investing, and his philosophy and style of investing are still replicated by millions of investors around the world.

Joseph Piotroski

Joseph Piotroski has managed to beat the market over a fairly significant period of time.
His method of investing arises from the need to improve a ratio that, until then, had been very important for value investors: the Price/Book Value of the company.
Thus, he managed to establish a company classification method based on 9 factors, which allowed to easily separate those companies that he called winners from those that you should dismiss. As a result, he managed to obtain an annualised return of over 23% for 20 consecutive years.

Peter Lynch

Peter Lynch's (1944) fame is mainly due to his time as manager of the Fidelity Magellan Fund.
Between 1977 and 1990, Lynch achieved an annualised return of 29.2% through this fund and, under his control, the fund went on to manage over $14 billion, compared to just over $2 million at the start.
In addition, Lynch can boast of having written some of the world's most famous and best-selling investment books.
In One Step Ahead of Wall Street, his best-known bestseller, Lynch explains his investment philosophy in a simple way adapted to all audiences.

John Bogle

John Bogle (1929-2019) is not strictly an investor, his influence on the basis of investment is undisputed, at least as it was understood until the 1970s.
He revolutionised the investment fund industry by laying the foundations for the passive management that has been so fashionable in recent years.
In 1974 he founded Vanguard, which is now the second largest asset manager in the world in terms of assets under management, behind only Blackrock.

A year later he founded the first index fund in history, an avant-garde and revolutionary idea in his time that democratised access to investment for small savers and changed the industry forever. ️

Warren Buffett

For the vast majority of experts, Warren Buffett (1930) is the best investor in history.
Known as the Oracle of Omaha, his hometown, the returns he has achieved through his investment company, Berkshire Hathaway, are unparalleled in any historical moment.
Specifically, Buffett has achieved an average annual return by subtracting reinvested dividends of 13% over 55 years using what for some is the best stock market investment strategy: value investing.
Its excellent results have helped it to figure prominently in the ranking of the world's largest fortunes published periodically by Forbes magazine, year after year.
His annual conferences, held in Omaha, with his colleague Charlie Munger, have become a place of pilgrimage for many value investors who are trying to replicate, or at least get closer to, the results of the good old Warren.

Charlie Munger

An inseparable companion of Warren Buffet, Charlie Munger (1924) became famous as the vice president of Berkshire Hathaway.
It is estimated that Munger achieved an average annualised return of 19.8% per year between 1962 and 1975, during which time the Dow Jones appreciated by an average of 4.9% per year.
Obviously, the key to his success is explained, as in the case of Buffett, by his ability to find companies based on the quality of the business and its competitive advantages.
A value approach that has also earned him a place on the Forbes list of the world's richest people, although far from his fellow sufferers.

Martin Zweig

Martin Zweig's investment strategy (1942-2013) was, a priori, simple: to obtain a long-term return above the market average by optimising the time spent in and out of the markets and by correctly selecting and allocating the assets in his portfolio.
Thanks to the combination of a series of indicators at a macroeconomic, technical and seasonal level, Zweig managed to greatly exceed the market's performance over an extended period of time, achieving an average annual return of 15.9% over 15 years.

John Neff

John Neff (1931-2019) carefully studied each investment. In his own words, his investment style was based on 3 basic pillars: character, objectives plus technique and experience, defining himself, like Dreman, as an opposing investor.
His investment style is well suited to long term investors who are looking for portfolio strength and performance over extended periods of time.
Thanks to this strategy, Neff was able to achieve an average annual return of 13.7% over 31 years.

Francisco García Paramés

The only Spanish investor on the list and one of the few Europeans, Paramés (1963), is also one of the youngest.
A fervent defender of the philosophy of value investing and of the Austrian school of the economic cycle, he is known as the Spanish Warren Buffett for replicating his investment strategy and obtaining, like the Omaha oracle, excellent results, although without reaching his returns.
He is also an avid reader and has recently written a book: Investing for the long term, my experience as an investor, in which he recounts his experience as an investor and explains the philosophy he has applied over the years to obtain very good returns consistently, year after year, being the visible head of one of the most successful Spanish asset managers.

Final word

You don't need to copy them, you need to learn risk management from them.It is also useful to understand that there is no one-size-fits-all recipe.You need to invest yourself, make mistakes and learn positively from your mistakes.